I guess GNU Chess hates draws...

I just beat GNU Chess at it's hardest level... a first, and very strange game. I have no idea why it preferred losing to drawing!! I'm playing white.

Originally posted by amolv06
I just beat GNU Chess at it's hardest level... a first, and very strange game. I have no idea why it preferred losing to drawing!! I'm playing white.

[pgn][Event "Human versus GNU Chess"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "????.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "White"]
[Black "GNU Chess"]
[Result "*"]
[BlackAI "GNU Chess"]
[BlackLevel "hard"]

1.d4 d5 2.c4 dxc4 3.Nf ...[text shortened]... 4 7.Bxc4 Bxd1 8.Bxf7+ Kd7 9.Be6+ Ke8 10.Bf7+ Kd7 11.Be6+ Kd6 12.Nb5# *[/pgn]

Funny game.
What is this GNU chess' estimated ELO rating?700?

Perhaps it has a setting on it to refuse draws to make it play sharp
and it's only doing what it is told.

Originally posted by Romanticus
Funny game.
What is this GNU chess' estimated ELO rating?700?

I hope not. It's been kicking my ass all day!

@GreenPawn: I thought of that possibility, but I have no idea how to change engine settings.

Originally posted by amolv06
I hope not. It's been kicking my ass all day!

@GreenPawn: I thought of that possibility, but I have no idea how to change engine settings.

Then most likely your PC had better things to do than spend it's resources on a chess program.
Or it's just one of those flukes of the universe. 🙂

Originally posted by amolv06
I hope not. It's been kicking my ass all day!

@GreenPawn: I thought of that possibility, but I have no idea how to change engine settings.

"- On the Free Internet Chess Server (freechess.org), GNU Chess 5.04 running on a Cyrix 166Mhz processor (Pentium 200MHz equivalent), with default settings attained a blitz rating of above 2100.

On a 2.4Ghz Pentium 4 with 512MB of RAM "nextgnu" on FICS attained standard rating of 2296, a Blitz ranking of 2237, and a Lightening rating of 2513 (Oct 2004)."
http://www.gnu.org/software/chess/chess_faq.html#B.2

so there obviously has been a contempt issue. it has walked into mate in 1 to avoid a draw.

you should be able to change engine parameters including contempt, but I don't know if GNU chess has that parameter available.

They always talk about you can take advantage of a computer not being able to see over its "horizon", but I don't think they meant 1 move?

Why not test it.

Try this postion



White to play gets the draw by chcecking on b3 & a3

To avoid the perpetual the King has to go to a7 when Qb7 is mate in one.

Originally posted by amolv06
I hope not. It's been kicking my ass all day!

@GreenPawn: I thought of that possibility, but I have no idea how to change engine settings.

I'm curious to know which OS and engine version you're using. Also, since this program isn't compiled by the author, there could be differences in the way the program's compiled by different people.

I downloaded Jim Ablett's compile version 5.07 for Windows and ran it in Arena. I don't see anything in the documentation talking about a contempt setting for the user. However, I did see some discussion in the common.h source file about a drawscore variable which can be used to penalize draws. (It's set to zero as a default.) I'm not a programmer, but I suspect this could only be changed to a non-zero setting before compilation.

I'd guess it's either a bug or a transient hiccup.

Originally posted by Mad Rook
I'd guess it's either a bug or a transient hiccup.

Another person has seen a similar problem:

http://www.mail-archive.com/bug-gnu-chess@gnu.org/msg00244.html

You didnt beat gnu , nah , you gave it Paul Morphy's autograph.

Originally posted by Varenka
Another person has seen a similar problem:

http://www.mail-archive.com/bug-gnu-chess@gnu.org/msg00244.html

OK, so there's our answer - a bug in the latest windows version (5.07) reported almost 1-1/2 years ago.

Buggy engines - can't stand 'em. (Maybe I'd be more sympathetic if I were a programmer.) I'll avoid this one for now.

Originally posted by Varenka
Another person has seen a similar problem:

http://www.mail-archive.com/bug-gnu-chess@gnu.org/msg00244.html

Here is the other game in question.

This one is quite funny. Poor thing simply hates to draw.

I could have fun with this watching it find imaginative
ways to avoid drawing and setting itself up for flashy finishes.

You can just imagine it thinkig:

"Try and draw with me would you! I'll show you."

What happens if you are scudding it - does it take a perpetual then?

Amolv, Please play out game again, swap sides and see what it does?

Pity you are not a subscriber Amolv you could place the program
in the RHP MAil Room and I could pick it up from there.

I'll go to the site and download it. Cheers.

I tried using Gnuchess to analyze the positions given by the OP and Greenpawn. But the Gnuchess engine is acting flaky, it sometimes works, but usually doesn't. It often seems to not want to run in analysis mode like a normal Winboard or UCI engine. (And yes, I even tried the analysis switch in the command line.)

I don't know what's going on, but I've had it with this goofy engine.

Unloading the Gnuchess engine regards,
MR